Dabral chairman of Bates David Enterprise

Dabral will also take on the responsibility of regional executive creative director for Bates Asia

Sonal Dabral & #BANNER1 & # is to be chairman, Bates David Enterprise, India, and regional executive creative director, Bates Asia. Currently, he is serving his two month notice period, after which he will be based in Singapore. But he will be back in India after a year. During this year, he will visit this country frequently.

Dabral will take over from Mohammad Khan, who is due to retire soon. In India, he will work closely with Subhash Kamath, who is the CEO for Bates' India operations.

Sonal Dabral

Commenting on the development, Khan says, "My retirement has been in the offing for some time and is part of a carefully planned strategy."

Kamath says, "We were looking at consolidating our creative strengths and with Sonal coming on board, it cannot get any better. He is one of Asia's most illustrious talents."

Dabral has been out of India since 1999, when he moved to O&M, Kuala Lumpur, as executive creative director. Later, he took over O&M, Singapore, as chairman and ECD in 2004.

Mohammad Khan

An NID graduate, Dabral started his career with Lintas, Delhi (now Lowe), and spent five years there. He moved to O&M, Mumbai, in 1989 to join Piyush Pandey, the agency's then creative director. He spent 10 years at O&M, Mumbai, and, together with Pandey, helped O&M become one of the top creative agencies in the country. During that time, they won several regional, national and international awards, including at Cannes, the Clios, D&AD, One Show, AdFest and Spikes.

Under his helm, Ogilvy, Singapore, was declared second runner-up in the global Agency of the Year awards at Cannes this year. The agency also became the third highest awarded agency in the world, competing against a record 25,700 entries from more than 80 countries. Campaign Brief Asia has named Ogilvy, Singapore, the number one creative agency for five consecutive years.